Leader Nepal bats for further strengthening CPN-UML

Leaders of Khanal-Nepal faction of CPN-UML have underscored further consolidating the party and saving it from the crisis.

Addressing the assembly of cadres of Khanal-Nepal faction led by Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhalanath Khanal in Kathmandu on Wednesday, leader Nepal viewed that the internal issues of the party should be resolved within the party and that he is willing to work together for the greater good of the party and its unification.

The former Prime Minister opined that the CPN-UML led by Chairperson and Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli should take forward the ideologies adopted by the 9th general assembly of the party so as to make CPN-UML stronger.

He also demanded with party chairperson Oli that the decisions made by the central committee of the CPN-UML on March 12 be renounced. The leaders close to Khanal-Nepal faction were absent in the meeting.

According to him, party chair Oli had asked Khanal-Nepal faction to call off today’s meeting. In response, Khanal said that he had asked the party chairperson to revoke the March 12 decisions for them not to hold today’s assembly. “But he did not agree to our terms. Hence, we organised today’s assembly,” he clarified.

He also shared that today’s assembly aimed to enthuse and encourage the cadres to keep up with the communist movement that he said was on the brink of a crisis.

The disgruntled faction’s leader blamed that the CPN-UML had failed to function in a way that ought to run after the Supreme Court revived the CPN-UML and CPN Maoist Centre, on February 23.

Nepal clarified that the internal disputes were not for post and power but was related to the ideologies, system and formation of the CPN-UML in the wake of the apex court squashing the merger between the CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Centre) as the Nepal Communist Party.

Disapproving the party’s meeting being held in leaders’ personal residence, Nepal asserted that such meetings should be convened in the party’s central office.

Similarly, another leader Jhalanath Khanal demanded that the March 12’s decisions should be scrapped and the CPN-UML should be unified further.

Khanal argued that there was no alternative to party unification to protect the communist movement. “To unify the CPN-UML,” said the former Prime Minister, “the party should be run as in the way it was run prior to its merger with another communist party.”